Well, everyone who buys pinball machines. Potential failures like this impact the hobby in general.

To be clear about my own personal motivation, I think the hobby will always be fine. I'm posting because I get riled up over pieces of crap pissing people's money away and want to help end it.

To be fair, there were people who wanted a RAZA game without me in it, and I have no issue with that. It was always kind of weird to be honest.

Thing is, you don't use me for my likeness or name (there are much better looking people in the world) unless the game is actually about what I do, in which case that's a horrible theme (see also Experts of Dangerous)

You use me for my ability to prototype and get things done. That's the real loss for John. Maybe his plan was to get me to do that for free because he put me in a game? I don't know. I'm pretty selfish but my egotism doesn't work that way (John doesn't know me well enough to know that)

John said I had to choose between him and Chuck. Well Spooky gives me royalties off shipping games every month, while whoever buys out Zidware's assets might releast RAZA by 2020.

Think I made the right choice.

By John's own words, this thread resulted in stopping other people from losing their money. His pre-orders dried up.

Bad for his business, but it was built on pre-order money and not shipping out games.

He can blame pinside for that, but obviously the blame lies elsewhere. If this thread weren't so high profile, that wouldn't have happened and there's be a bunch new people out money.

Well, of course not saying anything isn't good. 2 blog posts a week and answering all our questions would be better.

Sanitized letter I suspect will leave us wanting.

Looks like he blames everyone else but himself.

Rob

If it makes you feel any better, I don't know you from Adam, and I STILL think you made the better choice.

This is an interesting point. I bought into RAZA about six months in when a few spots came open. At the time, I had watched videos of John and Ben working in John's shop. I remember thinking at the time that Ben had made tons of cool stuff in the past and that he would be able to see this through. I should have realized that it would not get done without Ben, but it is easy to figure that now. Clearly, Ben made a great choice. I played AMH for the second time at Allentown and it is fast and fun.

Rosh - you're close to John's shop - why don't you go?

I was happy (and certainly more confident) when you were still on the Zidware team, Ben... but I do have to be honest, I was also one of the buyers who was happy to see your likeness off the backglass -- NOT because I thought you looked funny or anything (I don't), but because I was grateful I wouldn't have to explain who the "heck" Ben Heck was whenever someone came down into my game room

I liked the "Ben Heck - Mad Zombie Modder" character, but I thought his name on top billing was confusing to people, that it was a Ben Heck game (Like John Carpenter movies).

It did seem Ben was John's "muse" for this game concept, and removing him from it and turning it into Mars Attacks was pure payback for any perceived disloyalty towards John.

The only thing that will calm the masses is if he has accepted a buy out offer that removes himself from any further involvement. I hope that is the case.

Obviously you're much closer to this than most of us following along from the sidelines, but the idea that anything will be resolved in 30 days seems pretty optimistic. Still, for the sake of everyone that's got money tied up in this thing, I hope you're right!

New people continue to enter the hobby.

They don't all signup for Pinside. And, they asked us already in the community, what we think of new games, and new companies.

For us seasoned hobbyist to give any recommendation of any company, or a product, we will want to know the facts.

When a company fails to provide fundamental information, or they fail to pay their suppliers, or they rip-off international buyers, those companies will not get an endorsement from me.

Not sure how close I am, but I know it is here in the Chicago area, so I guess too far it can't be.

Given I have been pretty opinionated on this board, I guess maybe it is incumbent on me to take a trip to go visit. Of course whether he lets me in (I am a pinsider after all), that is a different story. But if he doesn't at least I can join an exclusive club that has just one other member.

I doubt he will give me much info on the important aspects of the situation (e.g. the true health of the business), but I can at least try. Maybe there is a disc golf course near where he is to at least give me something to justify the trip if he does not let me visit.

Probably be a week or two before I can carve out the time, although I guess if he is there 7x14 . . .

Hey John, if you are reading this, let me know if you are not going to let me visit, so I don't waste my time.

Was this post designed to get like 40 response posts saying "me"? We all have hundreds of dogs in the fight, they're called pinsiders.

Probably just bringing along a hackey-sack will get you in, he seems like the drum circle type to me.

I have been (dragged) to a couple of drum circles (actually kind of fun to do once). I can bring a drum if that will help get me in

My biggest issue with RAZA is the radical theme shift. John sold people on a ZOMBIE game, years before TWD. Remember how badly everyone wanted that theme? It was the Iron Maiden of its day.

Having a zombie lab under an amusement park, that's fine. The visuals of an old park would be cool, and kind of like that one movie, Zombieland wasn't it?

But then he added all this sci-fi crap which is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT GENRE. There are more clowns than zombies now which is a big No-No.

Plus he removed zombies and added all these copyrighted things like Mars Attacks, Robbie the Robot and Not Godzilla. No matter how obscure Mars Attacks is I guarantee it's still protected (so I'm basically saying all the RAZA art would need to be redone)

For sure.... too much "baking".

Yeah I agree, Ben.. the whole RAZA theme seems to be quite a shotgunned mishmash of a whole bunch of different stories at this point. And the colours are just.... wow. If there ever was a way to put an epileptic seizure down on a 2D canvas, I think John has discovered it.

Said it before and I'll say it again.. this thing has turned into the "The Homer" of pinball machines.. which is why I wanted out almost 11 months ago in the first place.

the-homer.jpg

I agree, we should all be allowed to post as the pinball community. More interested in how many there are as a group as it seems nobody of the preorders is getting much/any info - even with NDA, those folks should be able to disclose whether there has been any news or responses.

I'm in Chicago area too. I've talked to John several times over the years, for more than a few minutes, at Expos - I like his games, but not a fanboy - John and I have met at Gameworks just to play new Stern release like Iron Man, etc as fellow pinheads checking out new games, design ideas and enjoy the fun of pinball.

I don't know where John's shop is, I haven't talked to him since Expo 2013. So all the recent sh*t to hit the fan was long after our early conversations about Magic Girl which was in early design and some prototype or the Heck Zombie idea, or our bitching over a game of Avatar that seemed a bit lacking.

But, if I could get in touch with John, I too would offer to rep for pre-order pinsiders and relay whatover onsite info I can gather. I think John's NDA was more for design ideas and prototype mechs protection of IP.

I've been onsite at Stern, JJP and Spooky - I'd like to see what John's shop looks like anyway.

I think this should help:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jpop-update-thread%E2%80%A6%E2%80%A6%E2%80%A6%E2%80%A6%E2%80%A6mg-raza-and-aiw%E2%80%A6/page/164#post-2435748

I love how that's "rev 22". He should be up to 30 by now, right?

Absolutely been my biggest complaint about the game itself. Not only has the theme been downgraded, but the skittles color scheme is a step back as well. I loved the muted tones of the BHZA so much more than the current purple and blue explosion. I should be able to get a refund based solely on the fact this isn't even trying to be the same game I got in on (not to mention a million other reasons at this point).

Final? Are you sure?

Haha... But he changed the eyes on the Mars attack guy after expo when we all were telling him in this blog... Even the changed eyes won't be enough to save him from copy rights... So Ya he's still screwed

So for those people who are more familiar with making ramps.... is the issue that you basically can't go from paper & cad to "final" without extensive testing?

The odds of getting it perfect the first time is basically zero? Especially for a big name designer known for their butter ramps?

I've seen basically every well known magic act working today. Penn & Teller was the best imho. If I had seen the early show rather then the late one, I'd have walked out and straight to the ticket booth for tickets to the late show and watched it twice in a row.

Not saying you can't, and depends on how the CAD was done relative to the machine and how the paper ramps were done (e.g. how accurate are those to the cad drawing), but given how expensive the aluminum molds are vs wood, typically you want to validate the design before you go for the expensive molds. If things are off by say more then .25 inch, you could suddenly have an issue with where the ball is now exiting in the wrong spot, e.g. it now lands too high in the inlane and tends to bounce up and over to the outlane. If you do it first with wood and you find that to be the case, you adjust it, maybe you do another wood, or go to the aluminum, but now with a higher confidence level. However, if you did it with the aluminum, you probably say "its a feature" vs re-making the mold -- especially on a low production run.

Designing in CAD is great, but the physics of a pinball does not bow to a CAD drawing. I know in my experience you don't really know if you got it right, until you play it -- but I'm not a professional like jpop

I have seen some freaking perfect ramps created without ever using CAD that fit into existing pinball games. Wood, bondo, cement, etc. Its all about a workflow that works for you and the quantity you need to produce.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

For the majority of a pinball layout I can understand this. However, aren't we talking about a return lane plastic trough here? Where would the ball get hung up? What has to be so right? The ball comes into the trough and gravity does the rest. I must be missing why these are hard to get right.

Thanks:

For all you fans, Penn and Teller will be in NYC (Broadway) July 7 to Aug 16

Nuts, I am in Vegas Aug 12-16 and was planning on seeing them.

Maybe I can sneak up to NYC to see them before I go.

I think we are missing the point. This one part that took years to tool (not even produce.) What else is left?

Also, I echo the previous statements, making it straight out of aluminum is a mistake. We are making assumptions that he never made it in renwood to test it, which have no way of knowing. He does not communicate, so it feels like the right thing to say.

We are talking in general terms about the creation of plastic ramps, subways, etc, not just returns. I gave the one example where if the exit from the ramp is not right you can get undesirable bouncing to the outlane -- something I am sure everyone here has experienced on a game at some point. If you look at games over time you will see how things evolved to improve how they exit (e.g. tear drop shape.

Recently the DP guys had an issue with the subway on TBL, being too tight and the ball getting caught. They did the part with a 3d Printer and were able to a adjust the design to get it right. Probably good that they figured this out before getting a mold made and making hundreds. I'm sure when they first drew it up it looked fine.

I wonder what iteration of the white water insanity falls ramp they added the 'exit' so that if the ball did not make the climb successfully it could exit, and I wonder at what point they decided to add the small 'cover' piece to keep the ball from flying off on the way down. Maybe they got that right the first time, I don't know, but my point being, when you make this stuff, you don't know what you don't know.

Ahh I see, thanks for the clarification Rosh.

True, but I tend to think if he had, we would have seen those, just like we did send the paper curve ones that replaced the glued straight plastic ones.

Given johns level of perfectionism, he certainly may have gotten these right, but like you said just surprising to many of us that it seems he never did wood molds -- but maybe he did.

I'll give you credit, Ice. You're a glass is half full kind of guy.

More art redo's?? Nooooooooooooo!

lachied said:
If buyers can get the parts from him somehow and drop a Proc into it I can start coding for it. I won't write the software for JPop but I'll do it to help those that have dropped the money so they can have some kind of game. ONLY after they get the hardware though.

Yeah, but do you have any art samples you can provide as I hear those qualifications are much more important as a programmer or project manager

Very cool project, nice to know some options might exist someday. Thanks for the positive post!!!

I have been following this thread for months, its interesting to watch as people give up hope and than somehow find a sparkling possibility and start wishful thinking all over again. I have paid into RAZA about 80% of the total. I will be very surprised if I ever see anything from this man.
I am guessing by his actions that he is likely (*******). The artwork is scattered and he cannot follow a theme, everyone of any quality stops working with him and there isnt enough money to complete the games left. The money has been sitting in his account, so therefor he feels like it is his. Frankly, he probably doesnt have any other opportunities so he will slowly live off of the remainder until he can file bankruptcy. At that point he will publicly say how everyone in the pinball scene has destroyed his business through negativity directed at him, blaming everyone else for his failure. The pinball world with then lose total interest to him and he will go on doing something 'more important' to save him from the reality that in fact, he is a deceitful opportunist. His initial enthusiasm and motivation for this project was real, but had been somehow corrupted along the way. His self preservation instinct will allow him to justify using the capital remaining for his own purposes...as long as he continues 'working' than it is okay to use it. Nobody that has the ability to manufacture these machines would partner up with this man. That would be financial suicide. His complete avoidance of his customers is a way of protecting himself from hurting people in his mind, if they dont exist, they cant be hurt.......
In the end, Pinside will be guilty of his failure...... who wants to bet?
I give it 4 months.

Of course Pinside is guilty! What can a game designer and manufacturer do in the face of people talking on the internet?

None of the other manufacturers have had to deal with internet criticism. Ever.

I was never provided info on where to go so looks like no eyes on the ground today at Jpop headquarters.

And what is the criticism in this thread?

Games are years late.

Zero communication, specifically answers to concerns.

Unpaid vendors who have since been stiffed and aren't responded to.

No response to refund requests.

No playable games after 4+ years of development.

No timetable for completion.

Yeah, Pinside sure is a snake pit.

I know you're being sarcastic, but:
Heighway pinball - Why does the translite art on full throttle look like crap?
Stern - @wheresthecode, why is my iron monger breaking? Why are the fangs on my metallica breaking? Why is my AC/DC fogging up after only a few hundred plays
JJP - Why is my game 2 years late? Why is my game resetting? Why did my lamp board fail?
Spooky - On AMH, my scores don't save after a reset

Difference is, every other manufacturer has fixed the issues, and in some cases made public apologies... Not continue to change the original intent of the table design (RAZA is now clown park puke with 3 IP issues), and then blame pinside for not getting additional funding because they're making him look bad, not the 2+ year delay before a working beta machine.

I typed "Zidware Address" into Google and got the answer without even having to click. Hell, even Bing brought it up as the top link.

In Hiltons defense, it would have been difficult for himself and John. Just having a random Pinsider show up and ask questions.

Now, that's not to say Stern or JJP might accommodate someone, but it's not a given that a random person would/should be given access to a company's workshop. And especially John with his NDA. I doubt he'd let Hilton look around.

It should / has to be an owner.